Você está na página 1de 1

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1 GENERAL INTRODUCTION 1.1 The concept of Iarge-scaled ecological research `Macroecology' is a new word (Brown & Maurer 1989) for an old research agenda that can be traced back at least to the works of A.J. Lottka in the 1920's (Maurer 1999). Macroecological approaches already had a flourishing period in the 1960's and 70's (for example with the works of F.W. Preston and R.M. May) before the interest in the analysis of large-scale ecological patterns was recently revived (Brown 1999). As elaborately pointed out by B.A. Maurer (1999), the 'macroscopic perspective' an community ecology is an addition to smaller-scaled research, addressing the problem that local studies an single or few species may succeed in describing and explaining an investigated situation, but often do not retrieve general patterns that can be transferred to other taxa, times or sites (Maurer 1999, 2000, see also Boero et al. 2004). Rather, a broader scale of analysis - in taxonomy, time and space - is advocated (see Blackburn & Gaston 2002), hoping it may uncover patterns or `laws' (Colyvan & Ginzburg 2003) that focus less an the properties of single specimens or species, but an emergent properties of community Organisation - just as thermodynamic theory describes the properties of gasses in terms of pressure, temperature and volume without paying much attention to the movements of single molecules (Lottka 1925, cited in Maurer 1999, but see Hanski 1999; see also Jorgensen & Fath 2004). Some prominent 'macroecological' patterns might exemplify this intention: The species richness of an area grows with the size of that area (the 'species-area relationship', Scheiner 2003, Rosenzweig 1995) and with the energy that is available for biological processes (e.g. Bonn et al. 2004, Rajaniemi 2003). Species are more often small than big, and small species occur in higher population densities (e.g. Rosenzweig 1995, Maurer 1999, Blackburn et al. 1992). Furthermore, there are more rare than common species (e.g. Robinson 1998), and local rarity or commonness appears to be related to the geographical distribution of species (e.g. Gaston 1996a) - the latter relationship will be a major topic in this work (chapter 6). With the documentation, linkage and causal understanding of such patterns, macroecology might be able to connect the various fields of ecological and evolutionary science, such as biodiversity research, population ecology and biogeography (Maurer 2000, Blackburn & Gaston 2001). Advances in some of these fields are particularly important in tropical ecosystems, where scientific understanding of the systems is low in comparison to temperate systems, yet biological diversity and complexity are high and anthropogenic landscape conversion and the accompanying destruction of ecosystems are rapid (Linsenmair 1997, Groombridge 1992, Wilson 1992, WBGW 1999, see Jepson et al. 2001, Matthews 2002 for data from Indonesia), thus calling for applicable counter-strategies. Understanding biodiversity changes and its interplay with human activities is already now a prerequisite for successful conservation and management efforts (e.g. Moritz et al. 2001, Hector et al. 2001, Reid 1998, Hanski 2004, Jennings & Blanchard 2004, Gaston et al. 2000). Being able to

Você também pode gostar